As soon as you begin your Personal Development Inventory and Goal List establish some new habits. Use imagery (creative visualization) to assist you in transforming. Here are examples of three ways you can benefit from using this remarkable tool.

Your body responds to the way you think, feel and act. This is often called the “mind/body connection.” When you are stressed, anxious or upset, your body tries to tell you that something isn’t right.

Poor emotional health can weaken your body’s immune system, making you more likely to get colds and other infections during emotionally difficult times. Also, when you are feeling stressed, anxious or upset, you may not take care of your health as well as you should. You may not feel like exercising, eating nutritious foods, taking medicine that your doctor prescribes or getting the sleep you require. Some people abuse alcohol, tobacco or other drugs to try to make themselves feel better.

• Tap into the Mind-Body Connection - make time daily to relax, close your eyes, and imagine your cells repairing, restoring and growing themselves. Do this frequently for short periods until it becomes a habit.

A painful past can haunt you, stirring up rage, regret, sorrow, shame, and other bitter feelings. The emotional residue of that pain–a background buzz of self-punishment, fear, and anger–can quite literally control you, turning you into a victim of memory and drowning the more delicate emotions of love, joy, and compassion.

Positive memories haunt us, too, making us long with nostalgia for the freedom and excitement of days gone by. But it’s not just the past we remember that influences the present. To a large extent, the unremembered past shapes the feeling tone of our lives, sometimes calling forth confidence, generosity, and exuberance, and at other times unexplained anxiety, despair, and physical illness. Therefore it’s time to recognize forgiveness is a gift you give to your “self” in order to enable moving forward.

• Make Peace with the Past - release painful emotions, revise limiting decisions you made in the past, feel more empowered, and view the events of early times from a higher perspective. Do this whenever your recognize that past issues and past decisions are hampering your ability to move forward.

• Eliminate any energy you may still be storing in your past - close off all unfinished business or incomplete cycles of action (work, finances, family, partner, friends, health and well being etc.); remove toxic thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviours from your mind simply by focusing on what you want, not on what you don’t want; de-clutter and simplify your life, your house, car, garage, wardrobe, office etc. Eliminate any old energy that no longer serves you; make your life leaner and more purposeful; give every situation or coincidence its due attention, every day regardless of how small it may seem, always address every situation with the respect it deserves and at the time it arises.

You know how a magnet works, don’t you? At it’s most basic, a piece of magnetized steel will only attract products of iron ore and not such things as wood or plastic. In other words, like attracts like. Human beings are like magnets and the principle holds true: like attracts like. Whatever is in your mind at any given moment is the thing you are inviting to come and live with you, just as a magnet “invites” iron ore, so too, you attract the things that are in your mind. If you affirm your positive thoughts, you will attract greater and greater good in your life. However, the opposite is also true. If you affirm self doubt and worry thoughts, you will multiply these pessimistic affirmations and attract more and more negativity into your life.

• Attract What You Truly Desire
  Here is a visualization exercise for attracting what you desire. As you do this process, don’t worry about how you visualize. Some people see things clearly in their mind’s eye, while others just sense or feel things. However you do it is perfect for you.

• 1. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and relax.
• 2. Visualize yourself living the life you desire. Notice how it feels to be having and enjoying what you really want. Be lighthearted and playful. Get excited about what you are imagining. Embellish it. Dream big. Make it as real as you can.
• 3. Tell yourself, “I deserve to have what I truly desire,” as you continue to imagine yourself doing, being, and having whatever you are wanting to create or attract into your life.
• 4. Put it all in a bubble and feel yourself letting go as it drifts upwards.
• 5. Be prepared to take action whenever you are guided to do so. You will be prompted from within to take whatever steps are appropriate towards the attainment of your goals.
• 6. Avoid worrying about how long it will take. Instead, make it a point to enjoy your present circumstances, knowing that good things are on the way!

Links to related self help blog posts.